Original scientific paper
The Role of National Systems in the Admissibility of EPPO Evidence with an Emphasis on Croatia
Željko Karas
; Police College, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This paper examines the rules on the admissibility of evidence in the Regulation on establishing the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). The Regulation has not prescribed rules of its own but has left assessment of the admissibility of improperly obtained evidence to national systems. The paper therefore analyses the possible consequences in the EU Member States through the following characteristics of national systems of excluding improper evidence: the method of exclusion of evidence (automatic or balancing), the scope of the exclusion (rules which may lead to inadmissibility), and the admissibility of derived evidence. Based on the analysis of these characteristics, EU Member States are classified into three groups and their interrelations are analysed in the EPPO procedure.
The results show that great differences can occur in EPPO criminal
proceedings using identical evidence in different countries. This is particularly expected in a group of countries that use the automatic exclusionary rule for a wide scope of procedural violations. The Croatian
system of inadmissibility of improperly obtained evidence is described
in order to show some differences in comparative law.
Keywords
admissibility of evidence; EPPO; exclusionary rule; illegal evidence
Hrčak ID:
244948
URI
Publication date:
15.10.2020.
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